FOOD
SAFETY DIALOGUE

AgriProFocus in partnership with
the Kenya Horticultural Council and Nairobi County Government held a food
safety stakeholder meeting on behalf of the Netherlands Development Organization
(SNV). The meeting was held on 16th October 2018 at Jacaranda Hotel,
Nairobi and in attendance were: researchers, private sector actors, development
partners as well as public sector actors from county and national government.

SNV and its consortium of partners
are currently implementing a project on Market-led Horticulture Programme which
has three focus areas namely: – Food safety in fruits and vegetables, Food loss
reduction and inclusion of small holder farmers in agricultural value chains.

A
lot of studies and reports have been done on food security unfortunately, the
implementation of study findings have been poor; the meeting therefore aimed at
moving from studies to practice with the aim of piloting a traceability system
within Nairobi City Park Market through the findings of a market survey to be
carried out.

Ms.
Joyce Gema, Director TradeCare shared insights from a study by the 3R (robust,
reliable resilient) project which aims to generate evidence driven action for
food safety in the domestic market. The study emphasizes on the need for
coherence of interventions since there is a lot of fragmentation already in the
fruits and vegetable sub-sectors in Kenya. Additionally, there is need to look at
how and to what extent has there been spillover of knowledge and practices from
export to domestic market and how can the country leverage on the export
platform to accelerate implementation of food safety measures for the domestic
market.

Dr.
Andrew Edewa, Director Compliance Limited challenged the team undertaking
baseline study and all stakeholders working on food safety to take an integrated
approach to link hospital data of patients treated with food borne diseases
with environmental data of where the patients come from to be able to
understand the source of the risks that the patients could be exposed to and
therefore handle the risk at that point all through the chain in order to save
the consumer.

The
survey will help to implement a food safety system for the local public market.
It will also seek to establish what systems exist within the market, the
knowledge that exists within different stakeholders on food safety, benefits construed for food safety by the
different actors, awareness and existence of Hazard Analysis and Critical
Control Points (HACCP) in the market as well as other systems that may exist,
modes of communication and how information about food safety is communicated,
business drivers of the entrepreneurs in the market and their perception of the
economics of food safety to their businesses among other factors.